Annoyances in the gaming community.

Yes, this article will be a bit of a rant, I just feel like I need to get my opinion out there and say what I need to say. As a summary, this is about fanboys who hate things for no reason.

To start with I’m going to set up a scenario. You’re a Games Designer/Developer who has spent 1-3 years making a game. Doesn’t matter what genre game it is, or what type it is (Disc release/Arcade/Indie) just imagine yourselves in that situation. Imagining? Good. Now imagine that you have competitors already in the market, for example if your game is a FPS your competitor is Call of Duty. Still with me. Now there are 2 main criteria of gamer in the gaming community, those that will give anything a chance but will give reasons when they decide they don’t like anything. And there are those that are just major fanboys of games who won’t even try another game that is similar to there fanboyism because it hasn’t got the name printed on it. My rant will be about the second of these types.

Going back to the scenario, you are about to release your game and it’s got pretty good review scores, fairly close to your Market rivals. On release it sells well, and your immediately pleased that you’ve helped to make a fun game for the community to play. You go looking on the internet, to sites like Twitter and Youtube, to see if anyone is talking about your game. The game you’ve sat there and slaved over day in and day out to try and get perfect. I hope your still with me because here comes the main focus of this scenario.

You find the content you’ve been looking for. Normal people talking about your game. But you didn’t quite get what you wanted. You can take it if people don’t like your game, that’s part of being human, no one likes everything. This is what you’ve found, people who don’t like your game. So you start trying to find out why they dont like the game, you ask them politely for creative criticism so you can improve next time. Unlucky you, you have found the fanboys. They don’t like your game for one reason and one reason alone, it’s not Call of Duty, or it’s not Final Fantasy or whatever the equivalent maybe for that genre. They don’t like it simply because it’s not their favourite series.

Imagine how disheartening this must make you feel. To know that people hate your game for not being a different game. It could play just the same, or better. Have a great story. A fun multiplayer experience comparable to your rivals. But they don’t like it because it hasn’t got a certain name.

Now I hear from the people from the back of the room that this can’t mean anything. That big publishers don’t care about these small things. Well they obviously do. Activision is my case. They are a big company, they make the Call Of Duty series. Now what was their most recent Call of Duty game, that’s right Modern Warfare 2. Who here knew that originally the game didn’t have the “Call of Duty” name to it? Well it didn’t, but it does now. Why? Because the point I have just raised scared them. They wanted the game to sell well, but didn’t want to lose those gamers that immediately hate a game for having a different name. And the fact that Activision had to do that to ensure that people wouldn’t make fun of the game and not buy it is really disheartening to me for the games industry.

To ensure that a game is bought by people they need to give it a certain name, from a certain series. They can’t branch out the series without keeping the name either. It has to keep the name. Otherwise the lowlife of the internet will be annoyed and say “It’s rubbish because it’s not Call of Duty”. As I myself want to be a Games Designer, and want to make games that could be hits, I hope by the time I reach this stage in life, the internet has grown out of this incredibly childish stage. And with this last sentence, I hope I have gotten through to some people today.

Think about it from the Creators point of view, maybe you’ll think twice.